There seems to be just a little light at the end of the tunnel, the smallest indication that we as a society will start occupying normal processes again, instead of the whims of a mad would-be king. The sort of thing that means that just maybe we can make some plans without worrying that the ground shifts again by tomorrow. Please Snidely Whiplash totally got busted and didn’t even have time to put on Morning Dress before getting perp-walked.

For those that like that sense of civilization and will be in the Bay Area, the Cartoon Art Museum has some events coming up you may want to check out:

• Jo Morra was born in Uruguay in the 1870s, came to America, and spent his career creating illustrations, comic strips, paintings, sculpture, photographs, maps, and books. CAM will be supplementing the currently-running exhibition, The Life And Times Of Jo Mora (27 October 2018 – 28 April 2019) with a special presentation on Saturday, 23 February.

  Jo Mora At The Cartoon Art Museum And Beyond will see Peter Hiller (author of the Mora’s upcoming biography and curator of the Jo Mora Trust) talking about the exhibition and Mora’s body of work. The talk runs from 6:30pm to 8:00pm, and costs US$8 (advance purchase) or US$10 (at the door), with CAM members admitted free with RSVP.

• The following weekend, CAM’s monthly visiting artist program, Cartoonist IRL, welcomes Svetlana Chmakova (Crush, Brave, Awkward, and other books about the middle grade experience, plus a dozen other works of note). Q&A and signing with Chmakova are free with museum admission and will run from 1:00pm to 2:30pm on Sunday, 3 March. Chmakova’s appearance is part of CAM’s contributions to San Francisco Comics Fest (with more to be announced) and Will Eisner Week 2019.

One of the news-related links up top is to the twitterfeed of KB Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed; she livetweets administration press events so you don’t have to watch/listen. By coincidence, the first time I mentioned CAM this year, I had sad reason to mention Spangler — her enormous goof of a dog has cancer.

Today, in and around the larger world’s stupidity, she had an update about said goof, and it’s not great¹. So this is your reminder — Spangler has not posted a fundraiser and is not asking for money. But if you have ever heard me rave about her writing and somehow resisted the siren call, this would be an excellent time to check out her store, which is full of words.

If you want to jump into something that’s entirely self-contained and audaciously ambitious, may I suggest Stoneskin? It’s a cracker of a Sci-Fi story about sufficiently-advanced technology that appears to be magic, how the galaxy has crushes on teenagers, and also the importance of supply chains to a star-spanning civilization. You’ve never read anything like it.

Spam of the day:

Jimmymup wrote:

The rest is Chinese characters, but can we just focus on that account name for a second? Jimmymup sounds like somebody was really disappointed that their kid James was not born with wires attached to his arms.

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¹ Full disclosure: the same cancer killed both of my dogs, who due to age and challenges from their dog racing careers, would likely not have tolerated amputation well. I am rooting for this guy to knock cancer on its ass.

Hey, got some Kickstarter cash in your budget? There’s some things you might want to look at.

• Charles Brubaker has done licensed SpongeBob comics, done work with the usual gang of idiots, and a series of web strips that lean heavily on the cute. The latest of these, The Fuzzy Princess, has reached the point where an upgraded print collection makes sense. Crowdfunding, ho:
  

  I had two paperback volumes of “Fuzzy” printed, but due to limited resources they were released in black and white. I always dreamed of having it put out in color, however, and made it my goal to do so.

  This is where this Kickstarter come in, to reprint the first book volume in color. It’s not just a color version of the black and white books, I’m also adding new materials: title-page illustrations for each chapter, behind-the-scene sketches, as well as remastering old comic pages, with cleaned-up art and dialogue for clarity and general improvement.

  Given that Brubaker’s done this before, everything’s laid out and ready to send to the printer, so the promised August 2019 for fulfillment is eminently doable; physical copies start at US$20, which is pretty damn good for a 192 page book in color. There’s another 28 days to go and Brubaker’s coming up on 40% funded, but that backer count is a little low; it looks like he’s got a devoted group of superfans, but he’s going to have to get a broader base of support to make the (very reasonable) goal of US$5000. If you ask me, 20 bucks is a pretty fair price to take a flyer on a new comic. Give ‘er a look.

• I don’t usually point at Kickstarts that haven’t happened yet, but I’m making an exception. Inhibit is new to me, but it’s got a killer hook:
  

  As a kid, Victor dreamed of training to be a superhero. That didn’t go so well.

  Now, nine years later, Victor is a resident at the Earl Estate, a home for kids who haven’t yet demonstrated that they can control their powers. With his 18th birthday — and a transfer — only a few weeks away, he has one last chance to prove he is capable enough to receive his licence and go home.

  That comedown in the first line is great.

  Like I said, I like to promote stuff I’m familiar with, and while I’ve started a quick read of the archives, Inhibit’s been updating Wednesdays for four years and that’s 200+ comics to catch up on. The reason I’m mentioning it here is creator Eve Greenwood took the time to put together an announcement with a clear description of who they are, what they do, what they hope to accomplish, and where to go for more info. As a hack webcomics pseudojournalist, this makes my life a hell of a lot easier.

  Greenwood also dropped in some good images showing off various parts of the story as well as the cover¹, and gave me the full rundown: the campaign launches on 28 Jan (that’s next Monday) at 5:00pm GMT, and runs for 30 days. The goal is £4500 (approximately US$5800), with books starting at £20 plus shipping (which hopefully won’t be a bankbreaker). Now exactly what else is up for grabs at what support levels, and where the stretch goals go? We’ll learn together.

  I’m taking a flyer on this one myself because Greenwood’s obviously thinking and planning and treating their career seriously (having graduated university this past November with a Masters of Design in Comics & Graphic Novels) and I want to encourage that. Want me to take a flyer on you? Gotta bring your game up to at least Greenwood’s level. And if the Inhibit Kickstart craters, you’ll have to do even better, so we’re all rooting that that the followthrough will be as good as the prep.

Spam of the day:

Explore the Glory of Single Russian Women

The fine print at the bottom indicates This is an advertisement for services offered by SOL Networks Limited, which makes me wonder if they know what SOL stands for.

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¹ Which I have to say really grabbed me. Those faces are great and have oodles of character.

An air trip that was going suspiciously well ran into some snags on the back end, which got me home Too Damn Late. Then today, the local gas company’s ongoing maintenance & upgrade cycle hit my house, necessitating a turn-off of the magical hydrocarbon that makes things like heat and hot showers possible. What I’m saying is I could use some good news today. Luckily, several excellent people have stepped up.

• Okay, Molly Ostertag actually made her announcement yesterday, but I’m still happy today so it count: there will be a third book in her The Witch Boy/The Hidden Witch¹ series:
  

  I’m very excited to announce THE MIDWINTER WITCH – the third graphic novel in the Witch Boy series² and a continuation of the adventures of Aster, Charlie, Ariel, and Sedge! Preorder link below, this will be in stores everywhere 11/5/2019 ?? www.amazon.com/Midwinter-Witc …

  A few thoughts:

  1. Ostertag is a machine; three books released at one-year intervals? That’s an enormous amount of work to sneak in around her animation day job.
  2. I want all of the Witch Boy stories she has kicking around her in head; I want to have to dedicate an entire shelf to the world that Aster, Charlie, and the others inhabit.
  3. To the extent that it doesn’t kill her because see #1.
  4. That cover is gorgeous and heavy with portents. Heavy, I tells ya!

  Start making your Halloween-season plans³ now; come the frost, there’ll be a new witch in town.

• One may recall that it’s been a long time since The Abominable Charles Christopher has updated regularly; creator Karl Kerschl has been busy on print comics that pay nowish, whereas Charles Christopher holds the promise of a gorgeous book (and the income that would attach) at some nebulous point the future. One must support oneself and family, after all.

  But there have been two updates on two adjacent weeks and that is a blessing. The impetus may come from challenges in Kerschl’s life, in which case they’re more for his benefit than ours.

  Which is entirely as it should be. As much as I want to see all these characters again, none of that matters worth a damn compared to Kerchl’s well-being. I will celebrate and love each of these strips when they come, and if there’s never another I’ll be grateful for those we’ve had so far. Be well, Karl, and thanks for sharing when you can.

• Comics can tell stories in ways that other media just can’t. Today’s proof of concept comes from The Guardian, and in a brief (but very, very heartfelt) read, lays bare challenges and failures of the medical system in Britain. Not what you normally think of — budgets, services, cutbacks — but how doctors are trained, what toxicity is perpetuated and reinforced, and how it impacts patient care not in a quantifiable rating, but as human beings.

  Read Healing Alone and realize that the systemic flaws described here are damn near universal. Argue for a better, more humane system of training physicians, and we’ll get a better more humane system of care for all of us.

Spam of the day:

#1 erection killer

Friend, I am pretty confident saying that I do not wish to purchase your product and/or service.

_______________
¹ I’m not sure the series has a name, so until I learn otherwise I’m thinking of it as the Aster series, as Aster’s the foundational character.

² That didn’t last long. Okay, it’s the Witch Boy series.

³ Note to self: consider carving a pumpkin with some of the symbols for the magic names of things. Maybe ask Ostertag what the name of the pumpkin is.

Before we get to the Good Thing in the title, I wanted to mention an Auxiliary Good Thing. That is to say, the second issue of The Nib in print is reaching mailboxes — such as mine, today — and it looks great. If you want a copy of this issue, on the theme of Family, you can either go back in time and back the Kickstarter, or you can take out a supporting membership.

Both options give you a choice of digital or print, but let me assure you that like the Death issue from September, Family is beautifully designed, on weighty, satisfying paper and has a considerable odor from the many inks¹ used in its construction.

Okay, the main Good Thing: Word’s been going around for the past few days about how the Eric Carle Museum Of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, would be running an exhibition on the history of the graphic novel. Out Of The Box: The Graphic Novel Comes Of Age² opens on !0 Febrary and will run until 26 May, and will feature the work of Vera Brosgol, Catia Chien, Geoffrey Hayes, Gene Luen Yang, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hope Larson, Matt Phelan, David Small, Raina Telgemeier, and Sara Varon.

But wait! There’s more.

The night before (that would be 9 February), there’s an opening reception from 5:00pm-7:00pm, with guest curator Leonard S. Marcus Brosgol, Chien, Krosoczka, Phelan, Telgemeier, and Varon expected to be in attendance. There’s a talk with the same folks the next day (10th again) at 11:00am to officially open the exhibition.

If you want to attend these special events, you need to RSVP, via one of two different methods. For the reception, contact Jenny Darling Stasinos at 413-559-6310 or jennys [at] carlemuseum [dot] org; for the gallery talk, RSVP at 413-559-6336 or info [at] carlemuseum [dot] org. Reservations open today, and run through Monday, 4 February.

Now here’s the kicker — both of those events are for Carle Museum members. If you aren’t one, now’s the time to join. Please note that Amherst is in the middle of one of the greatest concentrations of web/indie comics creators on the continent³, the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, home to Northampton, Easthampton, TopatoCo, Eastworks, the very sexy R Stevens, and at least one creator of Ninja Turtles, so if you’re going you may as well wander around and try to spot background locations from Questionable Content.

It’s not like those folks keep storefronts you can wander into, but if you bump into one on the street, they’d probably appreciate it if you told them I love your work, please accept three dollars cash from me a tip and I promise I will leave you alone and not be a creepy stalker.

Spam of the day:

As Seen On TV + 1 Month FREE!

One of the great improvements in Gmail lately is that images do not automatically load in spam. As there’s no text in this email, only pictures, I literally have no idea what they’re trying to scam me with. It’s awesome.

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¹ I pity the youth of today, who never received a fresh-from-the-ditto machine quiz in junior high, the purplish ink still stinky and damp, making all your penciled answers smudge and tear. Wait, no, the opposite of that, those things were terrible.

² No direct link; at present, that’s on the upcoming exhibitions page, and will presumably shift to the current exhibitions page, and eventually the past exhibitions page.

³ Other loci include Portland, Seattle, the Bay Area, Toronto, Brooklyn, and White River Junction.

Know who we haven’t heard from in a while? Eben Burgoon. Longtime readers may recall that through the first half of Fleen’s history, we frequently noted happenings in Burgoon’s spy spoof, Eben07, in an appropriately purple prose. Then Burgoon and his compatriots moved onto B-Squad and he even gave me beer themed to his webcomic.

Burgoon’s been doing workshops and Maker Faires from Northern California (his normal stomping grounds) to as far away as Vilnius, Lithuania (no, really), the breadth of which made me wonder if he’d really gotten all that spycraft and secret mission tendency out of his system. Apparently not; Burgoon’s partnering with Starburns Industries to bring B-Squad back:

Starburns Industries Press sets its eyes on remastering an independent series, B-Squad, from indie darling author Eben Burgoon and a rotating roster illustrators and artists that change issue to issue.

B-Squad shares the ridiculous and dangerous missions of an expendable team of misfit mercenaries ranging from pop-culture riffs to cut from whole cloth oddballs. The bargain-bin commandos tackle leftover assignments of other more respected mercenary groups. SBI Press’s run begins with a remaster of the series debut Conspiracy in Cambodia, originally independently published in 2013, written by Burgoon and illustrated by Lauren Monardo.

In the spirit of a Saturday morning cartoon block, each B-Squad book serves as home for brand new tangential comics like [B-Squad illustrator Michael] Calero’s Monster Safari” and Burgoon’s newest creation about six-inch tall wizards trapped in the fast-food culture of a remote truck stop titled Tiny Wizards.

The remastered books are rounded out with activities, puzzles, and bonus content in homage to dentist office staples like Highlights magazine and ZooBooks.

No word as to whether or not the remastered B-Squad will feature Goofus and/or Gallant. You (where you is taken to mean folks in/around the Sacramento, California area) can ask him at the next workshop he’ll be running, on three Tuesdays in February (12th, 19th, 26th), at the Crocker Art Museum.

Spam of the day:

Account Name : ANDREW FARRINGTON
Account Number : [redacted]
IMPORTANT – YOUR PAYMENT CARD IS NEARING ITS EXPIRY DATE

Weird, why would you send something for Andrew Farrington to me? Then again, this might not be spam, but the latest in a long line of Other Garies Tyrrell sending their emails my way. Usually that’s easy to clear up, but I’ve had to resort to using the British tech press to shame Ryanair over their persistent screwups. Fun!

Hey, would you like to get a pair of webcomics in print form, similar in that they are both beautiful to look at, dissimilar in that their topics and art could not be more different? Sparky, it’s your lucky day!

• On the one hand, you’ve got a Kickstart for a 10 year compendium¹ of Sandra and Woo by Oliver Knözer (words) and Powree (pictures), which is about as cute and wholesome a comic as you’re ever going to see. Sandra’s 12, Woo’s a raccoon, the humor is comforting. I actually think it’s got a pretty good Calvin and Hobbes vibe to it.

  The campaign is to print the first 1031 SaW strips (out of 1042 as of today’s writing) and produce an art book to accompany it (with 92 pages in color, including 50 guest artists). PDFs of the books start at just €10, with various editions and combo platters of the books (standard edition, deluxe signed/sketched edition, etc), prints, and extras running up to babout €110.

  Amazingly, Knözer set the goal at a mere €3000 (or thereabouts, what with exchange rate fluctuations), so they’re well over ten times goal on funding. The only question is if you’re getting in on this during the 16 days remaining, or you miss your chance. And if you’re worried about transoceanic shipping costs, international shipping is in play, with a remarkable €10 for shipping outside Germany but inside the EU, and €15 (about US$17) everywhere else. Ask the folks at Topatoco who they’d kill to get a seventeen buck international shipping rate on 500+ page books&sup2.

• On the other, Kill Six Billion Demons by Abbadon is probably the polar opposite of Sandra and Woo in every way. A depraved universe of Old Gods, demons, angels, and worse is in turmoil as the Key To Damn Near Everything ends up in the possession of a barista/sorority girl from our reality and she is freaking the eff OUT. It’s a hoot. Image have printed the first two (very handsome, hugely detailed and very, very deranged) story arcs, and they want you to now that volume three (an enormous story, 147 pages deep) is on deck for March:
  

  Tom Parkinson-Morgan, known to his impressive online following as Abbadon, will release a trade paperback collection of the third chapter of his popular ongoing webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons this March from Image Comics.

  “In this one there’s love, revenge, obsession, a mad god, and a dragon,” said Parkinson-Morgan. “There’s also a four-page spread of an army of psychopathic accountant priests fighting colonial soldiers mounted on dinosaurs.”

  What Abbadon didn’t mention? Most of those psychopathic accountant priests are fighting with spears modified so that their stabby ends are sporting chainsaws, and they are not even the most bizarre combatants in the scene, which takes place in a fractal bank vault the size of a world at the center of the universe, which is built on the site of the progenitor god’s holy suicide. The entire damn comic is the fever dream of a mystic that spent the last 96 hours in a tequila/Red Bull-fueled haze while nonstop binging Metalocalypse. It’s glorious.

  Kill Six Billion Demons Book 3 will release to comic shops on 6 March 2019, bookstores 12 March, and looks to be priced at US$17. If you’re not into wholesome enough to spend US$17 on international shipping for Sandra and Woo in the February/March timeframe, spend it on the most thoroughly world-built exploration of eschatological theology that you’ve ever seen.

  With chainsaws.

Spam of the day:

Meet Singles Who Share Your Same Values

Crap, is this that dating site that launched to deal with the fact that Trumpaloompas can’t find anybody in DC to date them, and them promptly leaked all the personally-identifying information? Ick. No.

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¹ The Kickstart description actually says anthology, but that’s not the right word in English. Translations, man.

² I remember hearing once that Berlin offers extreme subsidies for mailing books; if you need to ship internationally, it may pay to send a pallet-load or two over to there for what’s damn-near flat-rate to the rest of the world.

We see the return of a coupla’ things today, one recent and one it’s been a while.

• Readers may recall Project: Rooftop, the superhero fashion website launched in 2006 by Dean Trippe and Chris Arrant to highlight the best in superhero costume/character design and redesign. The site’s featured various art over the years, but it’s been since Summer 2013 since there was a redesign contest — the once-regular highlight of P:R

  Or rather, it was since Summer 2013, because the contests are back:

  CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT – X-Men: Days of Future Pants!
  THE RULES:

  Pick 2-5 of your favorite X-Men. They can be the team you’ve always wanted to see, your favorite line-up of the past, or just your favorite X-Folks to draw.

  Design a core uniform. For this challenge, we’re inviting you to redesign the base team look, the cohesive uniform that says they’re a team, but as is often the case with a team of varied powers, abilities, and personal motifs, feel free to show individual members in personalized versions of that core uniform.

  The teaser for the contest has to be seen to be believed — a Kirby-style Cyclops having that dream when Professor X summons you to battle for a world that hates and fears you and you’re in your underwear¹. Or, uh, just look up top, it’s right there.

  If you think you can help Cyke (or other, better X-Men) never have to worry about a lack of functional, attractive uniform again, send your design to projectrooftop at gmail, which is a dot-com by 14 January. Judges (which appear to be Trippe, Arrant, and Jay Rachel Edidin & Miles Stokes (hosts of Jay And Miles X-Plain The X-Men) will be back with winners and commentary in February. Bragging rights await!

• More recently, David Malki ! caught a case of Munchausen’s elphatiasis² by proxy. Approximately 8 episodes into the 23 strip epic, I tweeted the following:
  

  Oh glob, I just had a terrible premonition. Next year’s @wondermark calendar by @malki is going to be 12 months of check out my sick elephant. And so help me, I’m going to buy it.

  To which David Malki ! replied with denial:

  Gary, Gary, Gary. You really think there will be meat left on this bone by the time the calendar rolls around??

  Which, in fact I did, despite the Malki !dian scoffing. And I was right to believe:

  Here are some pictures of the (presently in-production) 2019 Wondermark Calendar, Examining Ill Pachyderms: A Veteronorfian Field Guide.

  For those not familiar, Malki ! produces a calendar each year, with beautifully printed cards for two-week periods, arranged in two rows so you can always see at least two weeks into the future³. And while this year’s calendar will feature none of the strips from the recent epic, it will be an entire year of sick elephants.

  For the recent epic, you’ll have to purchase the book (at the same link, but be careful — some browsers don’t offer the choice to get the calendar with the book, or the book on its own; Chrome- and Mozilla-based browsers seem to work okay, though) wherein the entire saga of The Elephant Of Surprise. I ordered my calendar before the book was announced, so I’ll have to pick up a copy later — preferably when I can get Malki ! to sign it, at which time I fully intend to challenge him to come up with a new sick elephant pun. I am fearfully confident he will do it, too.

Spam of the day:

Latest hair growth released from the sharks

Sharks don’t have hair. That’s kind of the whole deal for mammals — hair. Sharks aren’t mammals, so no hair. Duh. Get your fake hair growth psuedoscience right, email spammers!

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¹ And visor, since it’s Cyclops. Because of the visor, the dude is even more of a never-nude than Tobias Fünke.

² Look it up.

³ As opposed to a traditional calendar where an entire month is shown, and on the last day of the month you see exactly zero days of the next month until you flip the page. It’s ingenious.

In the time since I decided on the topic for today’s post, the latest (and last for the year) Iron Circus Kickstart has launched, run out its early bird rewards, and cleared 45% funded.

It’s been 45 minutes since launch. I’ll have to update the numbers when I’m ready to put this post to bed.

I’ve really only got one thing to add, which I’ll get to in a moment. The campaign for the second Letters For Lucardo volume by Otava Heikkilä, the first having been a hit. It’s got vampires and hot, hot dude/dude action. The portrait of Lucardo on the cover bears more than a little resemblance to Prince. The prefunding will run for a total of 19 days, wrapping up on the 28th.

And there’s the one thing I wanted to mention — you need to be careful having Kickstarts at the end of the year, because if you get the money from the campaign but don’t spend it on project expenses before 31 December, that’s a tax hit. Given that the 28th is a Friday and it generally takes Kickstarter some time to come up with the dough, I expect that Iron Circus Supreme Leader For Life C Spike Trotman will actually get the money right at the start of 2019 and have the entire damn year to spend it before taxes raise their ugly head. Nice planning, Spike!

And even if hot, hot dude/dude vampire stories aren’t your thing, I can pretty much promise something in the Iron Circus catalog is. Spike sent me an email (and said it’s okay to share) about the storewide sale that’s going on now … there are six new books in the shop (and plenty more coming in the New Year), but if you want to save 20% on your purchase, place your order by the end of the month and use the discount code WarOnChristmas.

Update: 62 minutes, 52%.

Spam of the day:

Dear VAM POSTUPIL PLATEZH 3045 RUB

Yeahno. Not even trying to make sense of that.

Things are happening quickly. History barrels on.

• Following up on the Tumblrpocalypse (Tumblrgeddon?) from t’other day, I’m seeing a lot of posts indicating utterly nonsensical this is adult content !!!!11one!! judgments from Tumblr’s algorithms. For a representative sample of how bad those naked people- and smut-identifying tools are, let’s look at just one set of flagged images, from Yuko Ota:
  

  a cool compilation of posts that were flagged by tumblr for containing pornography

  Included are a photo of the cover of her Offhand art book, a photo of the cover of Our Cats Are More Famous Than us, two update teasers from Barbarous, a picture of a gargoyle and mutant bird Maw, and the Maw plushie.

  What the hell, Tumblr? And this is just one creator, with a relatively short thread of WTH. I’ve seen literally hundreds of entirely inoffensive images that are about to be purged to heck and back because the entire class of content that Tumblr built its growth on is now officially icky¹. As people are grabbing up their Tumblr contents to preserve them, they are also looking for new places to keep all that stuff for display.

  Various Mastodon and Ello proponents are out there, but C Spike Trotman is pointing folks towards Pillowfort³, which as of this writing is experiencing stability issues to the massive land-rush. Under The Ink is keeping a running list of NSFW webcomics and creators, so that everybody can find stuff when it all settles again.

• Another intriguing possibility? PornHub:
  

  Tumblrs: Pornhub welcomes you with open arms. Join our amazing community of millions Curators: Customize your personal feed, create playlists, generate gifs and more Creators: Upload videos, photos, gifs & share text posts to a massive audience. Earn revenue on your content.

  Turns out they’ve always allowed non-video content, and they are probably the site least likely to ever decide that hosting naked people and smut is beneath them, so there’s that. Gonna get tripped by a lot of nanny filters, though.

• And for those of you not dealing with the Tumblr thing today, here’s another surprise: Larry Gonick — indie cartoonist since small times; I first read his Cartoon Guide To Computer Science 35 years ago in high school, which is where I first learned about Claude Shannon, whose wisdom I have built my life around — is having a sale.

  Including originals.

  Time to get me a unicycling engineer that teaches me about Boolean logic.

Spam of the day:

Take part in a simple survey and get a guaranteed prize

I see no reason that your email — translated from the original Russian — should make me hesitant to click on your surely-innocent link.

_______________
¹ I’m told² that in addition to the tsunami of inappropriately-flagged images, a bunch of people are loading their formerly SFW Tumblr with as much hardcore porn as they can, figuring that if they’re gonna be flagged/shut down, they may as well earn it. Well done, I say.

² I don’t have a Tumblr account and so cannot verify.

³ She’d know, she’s the publisher of lots of quality smut. A peddler, you might almost say.

The time when hopefully-smart people tell us what the best things of the year were; a couple of well-curated lists have hit in the last day or so, and I thought I should point out some of the recognition that webcomics (and the webcomics-adjacent) have earned.

• There are very few writers on comics (of all types) working in English that are as good as Oliver Sava at The AV Club; even better, Sava has an eye for talent and has sought out others that have interesting, smart perspectives on comics and gives them plenty of space to write. He’s joined on the 2018 list of best comics by Caitlin Rosenberg, who nearly always has something to point out that I’d missed in whatever we both read.

  Giant Days (by John Allison, Max Sarin, and Whitney Cogar) continued its run of excellence, so no surprise to see a little love for the Tackleverse. Print (or reprint) runs of On A Sunbeam (by Tillie Walden) and Rice Boy (by Evan Dahm) also get nods — they’re both still available in their entirety online, but this is the year that :01 Books and Iron Circus, respectively, pushed the stories wide. Finally, they note that the single best strip — heck, the single best panel — of 2018 can be summed up in three words: Sluggo is lit, from the revamped Nancy by pseudonymous webcomicker Olivia Jaimes, who’s made the comics page safe for weirdness again.

• NPR, meanwhile, has produced a deeply curated list of the best books of 2018, and as usual they include a healthy selection of words+pictures; close to 10% of this year’s recommendations could be called comics. Like On A Sunbeam and Rice Boy, you can find much of the comics that went into Check Please!: Book One (by Ngozi Ukazu) and Your Black Friend (by Ben Passmore) online; the print editions of both are surely spreading their reach, though.

  I’m on record as being deeply conflicted about Jen Wang’s The Prince And The Dressmaker, but I’m not going to say that the NPR reviewer’s delight is misplaced or wrong — we all get from books what we get¹. Other books from onetime or sometime webcomickers include Vera Brosgol’s delightful and cringey Be Prepared, Lisa Hanawalt’s Coyote Doggirl, and Luisa — Now And Then, adapted by the invaluable Mariko Tamaki.

  Finally, in the realm of pure literature, you get some love for the only book that will let you jumpstart an entire civilization if stranded in the past, How To Invent Everything, by Ryan North (illustrations by Lucy Bellwood). Fun fact! According to North, one of the key technologies for your civilization is non-sucky numbers², which seems a random thing for me to mention here for no reason at all, but I sure did that.

• Hey, you know what you can do with non-sucky numbers? Measure stuff and calculate ratios! And you know what the greatest ratio in the world is? North, building on the work of Karla Pacheco, gifted us with such a ratio just today:
  

  Big Cow was photographed next to Small Cows. So how does Knickers compare to REGULAR cows?? Well @THEKarlaPacheco is slightly taller than a standard Holstein, and since I am slightly taller than Big Cow, the ratio between Big Cow and a regular cow is about… THIS

  Pacheco, I should note, has made a habit of being photographed with taller people — because pretty much everybody is — including, sometimes, much taller people like the Northesque Jeph Jacques. And North, I should note, has made a habit of being photographed with shorter people — because pretty much everybody is — including, sometimes, much shorter people like the Pachecoesque Shin Ying Khor. It is now my goal to measure as many comics folk as possible against one of these Big Cow/Small Cow metersticks, for science. Moo.

Spam of the day:

Target customers directly with email marketing tactics

a) No. b) Your email domain is duderenata.com, which sounds … wrong. Like cinemarama or perhaps Estradarama, but with duders?

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¹ However, I stand by my contention that Molly Ostertag’s The Witch Boy covered much of the same topical ground with more subtlety and honesty. It was released in 2017, so it’s not on the list. The sequel is, if anything, even better, but both books suffered from releasing at the end of October, too late for inclusion in lists that must have already been under construction.

² The others being verbal language, written language, the scientific method, and a calorie surplus.